1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic chamfering machine wherein the movement of a grinder wheel with respect to a workpiece is controlled by a tracer element urged against the outer peripheral surface of the workpiece itself, to remove a constant amount of material and uniformly chamfer the outer periphery on one end surface of the workpiece.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, various articles are formed with chamfered end surfaces for inherent purposes. Referring to one example, a ceramic honeycomb structural body used as a catalytic converter in the exhaust gas system of an automobile is generally of cylindrical configuration having in its cross-section an elongated circular contour, with a number of parallel channels extending inside thereof between both end surfaces. Such a honeycomb structural body is thin-walled and liable to be broken, so that it is necessary to prevent damages arising from temperature variation, etc., of the structural body accommodated in a catalyzer casing to the extent possible. In this connection, there has been a proposal to chamfer the outer periphery on both end surfaces of the structural body by applying a grinding operation thereto and removing a constant amount of material, as disclosed, e.g. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,396,664.
Conventionally, however, the above-mentioned chamfering operation has been applied to the end surfaces of the honeycomb structural body manually by operating personnels. This results in a poor productivity and makes it difficult to maintain a constant product quality because of fluctuation in the amount of removed material.
One may thus consider that these drawbacks can be eliminated by making use of an automatic chamfering machine consisting of a profile grinding machine, which includes a tracer element adapted to be urged against the outer peripheral surface of a model to control the movement of a grinder wheel with respect to the workpiece. On the other hand, however, honeycomb structural bodies used as an automobile catalytic converter as mentioned above are often of different configuration and/or size, depending upon the type of vehicles. Thus, when realizing an automatic chamfering machine, the machine has to be adjusted to change models upon frequent alterations of the configuration or size of the product. Such an adjustment of the machine necessitates troublesome and time consuming manual operations, and makes it still difficult to improve the productivity.